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Document Type

Abstract

Publication Date

12-1-2024

Abstract

Background/Purpose: Lewis Mumford insightfully points out that "if sport is played for sport's sake, then its primary significance is lost". Under the coercion of the machine system, sport has become a so-called spontaneous response to resist the machine system, but such spontaneous response has not succeeded in resisting the machine system, instead, it has made sport itself a compensatory system to stabilize the order under the machine system, which has led to a crisis in the ecology of sport itself. Mumford's critique is an effective path to solving the ecological crisis of sport by practicing deep ecological sport ideology. Deep ecological view of sport is a view of sport that organically combines nature, sport and people.

Method: Using qualitative research methods, such as literature analysis and textual analysis, starting from the logic of the book Technology and Civilization, placing ourselves in the historical environment where Mumford is located, and combining the critical logic of Technology and Civilization, we excavate the commonality between Lewis Mumford's critical thought and the deep ecological sports thought.

Results: Mumford notes that sport exists in abstract form in the machine civilization, and he summarizes the elements that sport possesses: the spectacle of the event, the competition in the event, and the popular new type of hero.

Spectators see the spectacle and feel mobilized because of the characteristic satisfaction that the machine system brings to the spectator, but this satisfaction is based on the cost of damaging the athlete's body. At the same time, time has replaced visible opponents, and the original race of the event against the man has become a race against the record, with people far more keen on setting records than they are concerned with placing. The emergence of sports stars has rendered it pointless for sport to rebel against the machine system, for sport has become an integral part of a generally tightly controlled life.

Conclusion/Discussion: The mass sport under the machine system criticized by Mumford puts the benefits brought by sport above life, and the significance of people as well as sport is seriously distorted. What Mumford hopes for, and what the deep ecological view of sport ideology practises[sic], is to establish an organic worldview, so that inhuman, mechanized sport can be transformed into human, organic and ecological sport, and thus a real solution to the ecological crisis of sport can be found.

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